On the Record with the White House Press Corps

This weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner promises to be its usual boozy mix of celebrities, politicians and journalists at Washington’s prom weekend. But at Politico Magazine, we decided to skip the annual rite of bemoaning all that incestuous schmoozing and go back to the event’s roots as a moment to take stock of the best journalism being done around America’s essential institution: Why not put the White House correspondents back in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner?

The result is our survey of more than 60 reporters who spilled about covering 1600 Pennsylvania. Below are their responses, in their own words, to six on-the-record questions, and you can also see the full results of the anonymous survey here. We asked unvarnished questions and got unvarnished answers—some of them quite surprising—from a unique group of journalists who, like their predecessors who founded the White House Correspondents’ Association 100 years ago, are perpetually battling for more access to, and better understanding of, the president and his staff. Here’s what they told us about what it’s really like to work the most high-profile beat in Washington.

How much we cover out that is not important enough to publish. How much hurry-up-and-wait consumes of each day and each trip. — Ann Compton, ABC News

Most questions don’t get answered. — Mark Knoller, CBS News

The White House often hides things in plain sight that they’re up to but don’t want you to know, if you listen to officials, and the president, closely enough. — Carol Lee, Wall Street Journal

How extremely limited our access is to officials—not because we’re lazy, but because officials have been instructed not to talk to reporters. — Cheryl Bolen, Bloomberg BNA

That it’s quite often best done by NOT covering the White House. Talk to Congress. Watch other countries’ governments. Reach out to agencies. You’re looking for overlaps in information without the overlap in keeping the information bottled up. — Olivier Knox, Yahoo News

The 95 percent of the job that you don’t see on camera is claustrophobic, frustrating, sleep-denying, life-shortening and probably a violation of the Geneva Conventions. — Mark S. Smith, Associated Press

It’s like being a theater critic. — Corine Lesnes, Le Monde

The briefing room is smaller than it looks on TV. — Scott Horsley, NPR

It’s the worst beat in politics. Like covering a horse race from inside a horse. Better to come in and out as an investigative reporter, a congressional hack, or tackle a special policy area. — Glenn Thrush, Politico Magazine

How grinding it is and how difficult it is to develop sources outside the press office. — Eleanor Clift, Daily Beast

We have very little real interaction with the person we cover. — Peter Baker, New York Times

The disjoint between public image, even self-image, of being a White House correspondent and the realities of how little access and real understanding one may have due to the controlling and manipulative rules of the game. — Jim Warren, New York Daily News

The biggest outlets pay the most, and get the favors, but that is logical. — Connie Lawn, Audio Video News

It’s a very rewarding front row seat to history. The day that reporters covering the White House take the beat for granted is a day to find some other assignment or line of work. I always describe it as “the beat of last resort and first resort” in terms of issues that end up in White House correspondents’ in-boxes. There are few issues that don’t somehow lend themselves to White House coverage. But it is not the “glamour beat” that many people think it to be. It involves persistence, lots of homework, long hours and lots of travel. — Peter Maer, CBS News

How miserable and unglamorous the beat is much of the time. — Todd Purdum, Politico/Vanity Fair

Covering the White House is not covering the U.S. Congress. For an international audience, they can’t really tell the difference, so that is part of my job as a foreign correspondent, no kidding. Should we have more foreign reporters in the White House to let the global audience know how the oldest democracy and the heart of the greatest power is functioning? — Ching-Yi Chang, Phoenix Television

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How difficult it is. The opposite of glamorous. You have to work very hard all the time. No life. When you are working for a 24-hour news channel and a foreign media organization, sometimes you become “the translator in chief of Jay Carney.” Can be very frustrating. People think it’s extraordinary. … Unfortunately, it’s the opposite of being a reporter. And sometimes you have and want to be a reporter. The White House needs to have more HUMAN INTERACTION with reporters. — Laura Haim, Canal+

That you are in cramped quarters, with very limited privacy and only two bathrooms for a lot of reporters! — Steve Scully, C-SPAN

What they see on TV during the daily briefing is not really the job. — Evan McMorris-Santoro, BuzzFeed

We don’t see the president every day. — Takaaki Abe, Nippon Television

You must have patience and perseverance to get it right. — Bryan Cole, Fox News

It’s not rocket science. — Andrei Sitov, ITAR-TASS

It can be really great at times. The general notion that the White House can be a frustrating beat is true. Most of the travel is not going to the Vatican on Air Force One, but flying commercial to Charlotte. Many days you don’t learn anything covering the press briefings. Obama (like his predecessors) gives the same speeches all the time. But there’s a lot of variety, and that keeps it interesting. It’s a beat where you get to write about domestic policy, foreign policy, politics, race, culture, education, health care, everything. You have to learn quickly and you do. — Perry Bacon Jr., MSNBC/thegrio.com

Even though you are physically within the White House, you are not that much more privy to inside information than someone in Oregon. — Keith Koffler, White House Dossier